Agenda 21 and the Threat in Your Backyard

When the Heritage Foundation starts to pay attention to something, it’s time for the rest of us to, as well:

Ready to trade in your car for a bike, or maybe a subway instead? Interested in fewer choices for your home, paying more for housing, and being crammed into a denser neighborhood? You can have all this and more if radical environmentalists and “smart growth” advocates have their way and local, state, and the federal government impose the policies set forth in the United Nations’ Agenda 21.

You might have heard of this nefarious-sounding policy in a recent Republican presidential debate, but even if you haven’t, here’s some background information: Agenda 21 is a voluntary plan adopted at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. It calls on governments to intervene and regulate nearly every potential impact that human activity could have on the environment. The end goal? Getting governments to “rethink economic development and find ways to halt the destruction of irreplaceable natural resources and pollution of the planet.”

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